Kale tossed his pen and notepad on the desk. “Now we need to ask you some personal questions, Judge Arroyo, if you don’t mind.”
Manny pressed his molars together, crossed his legs under the table. “I don’t mind at all.”
“Taxes?”
“Always on time.”
“Any illegals in your employ? Nanny or housekeeper you pay under the table?”
“Everything’s on the up and up.”
“I see you’re recently divorced.”
“I am. In January.”
“You know that’s not ideal.”
“Well, it is what it is.”
“Might I ask you why?”
Manny peered at him intently. “Might I ask why it matters?”
Kale sat back, chuckling. “’Cause if you’re going be our nominee, then we need to know exactly what bones are buried in your backyard.”
Manny nodded. Nothing wrong with challenging a probing question. It showed independence, strength and assurance, all qualities this group would be pleased to see. “Sonia and I had irreconcilable differences.”
“Affairs?”
“Just fighting.”
“Nothing ever physical, though, right? No hitting or anything?”
“Of course not, Gordon. My God.”
“Well, Manny, I’ve got to ask. The confirmation process isn’t a schoolyard kickball game, and the referees don’t always have your best interests in mind.” Kale picked up his pen again, tapped it against his nose. “On good enough terms with the ex these days that she’d show up with the kids and sit in the front row for a hearing? Dressed up and so forth?”
“Sonia is amenable, yes.”
“You say that like you don’t believe it.”
“It might cost me a bit personally, but if I ask her, she’ll show.”
Everyone, including Bloomfield, shared a hearty laugh over that.
“Seeing anyone new?”
He shook his head somberly. “I’m single.”
“Anything else? Anything at all? Things you don’t want to say, but unfortunately have to? We’re not fond of surprises.”
“That’s everything, Gordon.” Manny smiled. But that phrase—I’m single—lingered in his mind.
He fielded additional questions about his childhood in Irvine, his father’s managerial position in a U.S.-owned pharmaceutical company—the reason for his family’s emigration to California from Puerto Rico—and his undergraduate years at Baylor. The conversation took a quick detour into the prospects of the Baylor Bears football team this season—another good sign. They all stood when it was time for Manny to go. He shook their hands once again, his palms no longer sweaty, and thanked them individually, but not profusely—no dignity in sycophancy. Manny was released with an assurance that he would be contacted in the near future, no matter what they decided.
The two interns waited for him in the next room and ferried him back down the elevator. The same driver was sitting in the idling limo by the curb. As the Town Car pulled away from the Old Executive Office Building, Manny slouched in exhaustion from his ordeal, and looked out the back window at this city he barely knew. This bureaucratic town might soon be his home.
He closed his eyes and pictured Cassandra Sykes. Last week she had stomped into Manny’s condo and collapsed on his sofa, her eyes red and puffy from tears. Her hair had abandoned its tight curl and exploded in all directions, wild and frizzy. Her skin was blotchy, and she had swollen bags under her eyes. She said she had just left her husband, Denny, for good. What the hell was wrong with women these days? If you’re going to leave your husband and expect another man to take you in right away, isn’t it just common sense to pull yourself together before descending on him? Is that any way to stalk your new prey? You do your fucking hair, at the very least.
Cassandra made a stupid and naïve suggestion that night. She said that she shouldn’t move to Washington in the fall, that she should drop her next job as Associate Chief Counsel for Corporate Affairs with the IRS and instead find a job in the Bay area. She wanted to move in with Manny. Denny was an overgrown man-boy, she said, who would never finish his PhD—she just didn’t love him anymore. She was ready to move on. She pushed Manny on her plan, but he said it was too serious a decision to make in one night. He told her he would think about it.
Christ Almighty, he had gotten in too deep with that woman. He had been planning to end their relationship as soon as Cassandra moved to Washington in September, but now things were getting complicated. Things were getting ugly. Cassandra was getting ugly.
He leaned back against the headrest behind him. The Town Car crossed the 14th Street Bridge into Virginia, heading back to Dulles Airport, where Manny would catch the late flight to San Francisco. I’m single, he told Kale, Rimm and Batherson, Nicolaides and MacKneer. He told the Vice President of the United States that he was single. Now he had better make that true.
Manny was unwinding before a shitty cop show the following Wednesday night, eating a bowl of Shredded Wheat and drinking a Diet Coke, when his intercom buzzed. No question who it was. He had been ignoring Cassandra’s increasingly pushy phone messages all week, and it was just like her to drop by without warning. He switched the TV off, left his cereal on the side table, and pressed the button on his intercom.
“I need to speak to you.”
“You’ve got to come back another time. I’ve got three opinions due on Friday.”
“Manny, I have to speak to you now.”
“I’m sure it can wait, Cassandra.”
“It’s not going to wait. I’m going to stay out here until you buzz me up.”
He released the talk button on his intercom. Christ. Manny did not want this incensed and possessive woman stalking him on the corner of Berry and 5th while residents tramped in and out of his building. He buzzed her up, went to empty his cereal, and left the bowl by the sink. Maybe he should take some papers out and spread them out on the coffee table to make it look as if he had been working.
Cassandra stood on his threshold, wearing an oversized sweater and leggings, her hair pulled back into a scrappy pony-tail and her face entirely devoid of makeup. Manny held the door open for her. He didn’t touch or greet her, and then he followed her into the living room.
She didn’t sit down. She looked at him, wrinkles pressed between her eyebrows, and she tensed and distended her otherwise soft lips. Cassandra was so far removed from the coy and pretty young lady who had entered his chambers last September, with that bright red belt and red shoes, that sheer silk scarf knotted around her neck, her sweet smile and effortless, casual elegance.
“I’m pregnant.”
Manny heard the words, but he took a moment to register them. Sour bile seeped beneath his tongue from the back of his throat.
“Are you sure Denny’s not the father?”
“Are you kidding? I haven’t slept with Denny since October. You know that.”
Out the window, he searched the blackness of San Francisco bay, the yellow lights of Alameda glowing behind it. Rage made those lights tremble and wave in his vision.
“Did you deliberately not take the proper precautions?”
“Oh my God.” Cassandra laughed bitterly, walked in a circle and glared at him. “What about you, Manny? Did you deliberately put your condom on wrongly?” Without blush or shadow, her wide-set eyes and broad nose loudly broadcasted her relationship to Justice Sykes—something he had managed not to think about for all these months. It was not an attractive association. “I cannot fucking believe you just said that.”
He retreated into the kitchen and stood behind the counter. Putting a reasonable physical barrier between him and this woman seemed like a mighty fine idea right now. He felt like strangling her. He stared at the counter, its green marble flecked with shining bits of quartz, which seemed to pulse inside the stone. “I am very angry about this.”
“You are such an asshole.”
“Calm down, Cassandra.”
“I’m perfectly calm, Manny. Do I not look calm to you?”
She didn’t move or flinch—just stared at him.
He felt heavy on his feet. He felt hot and suddenly dizzy, cornered and violent—like a tricked animal, like he had been playing some secret game for months that he had never understood, with rules beyond his comprehension. Traps and snares had been set for him. Manny’s rage expanded. He wanted to snarl, and bite this woman. Had she done this to him on purpose? Had Cassandra lured him into her lair with fake warmth and girlish deference?
He didn’t take his eyes off the green marble counter.
“I’m thinking about getting an abortion.”
“You know perfectly well, Cassandra, what I think of that odious practice.” He channeled all of his energy into sounding steady, keeping calm. He would be okay as long as he didn’t look at her. “I can’t believe you did this. You’ve just put us in a terrible situation.”
“Me? It’s my fault?”
“I was under the distinct and clear impression you were taking care of this.”
“It takes two to get pregnant, Manny.”
Now he had to look up at her. She aimed her teary, bloodshot eyes at him, a bubble of snot in her nostrils.
“You are such an unbelievable pig,” she said. Cassandra stormed past him, out of his condo, slamming the door behind her. He heard her cursing in the hallway, all the way to the elevator.
Manny spun around and ripped opened the refrigerator door. Milk and eggs and cheese and fucking deli meat. He slammed the door closed, grabbed the bowl by the sink and smashed it on the floor.
Shards of blue ceramic were scattered around his kitchen, under his refrigerator and beneath the counter. His neck pulsed with rage, but less now, less. He turned on the water, splashed his face, and then looked at what he had done. He had broken that bowl: his actions, his rage. Manny could break another bowl; he could whine and complain and wail—or he could sweep up the mess. It was his decision, his agency. He had been angry enough to attack Cassandra, but he hadn’t done that. Manny alone controlled what Manny did. Manny alone had put himself through Baylor and Penn Law; he alone had worked his way up the ladder at Farrow Marsh and made the right friends in that practice—Martin Fieldstone, Gordon Kale, Jeff Haverstein—to earn his Ninth Circuit appointment. No one else was living his life for him. It was all his own responsibility. And now it was his responsibility to calm down. He would figure out what to do with Cassandra, figure out how to seduce the Shaw administration. He would get that fucking appointment to the United States Supreme Court. Manny would do all of it, alone.
Late that night, Gordon Kale called to say that the President of the United States wanted to interview Manny in person, so would he mind coming back to Washington immediately, this time for a few days? Manny assured him it was no problem. In the early morning, he emailed his secretary, rescheduled a dentist appointment, packed his bag and cabbed to the airport in time for a 9 A.M. flight—a rush of activity that didn’t allow him to think. It wasn’t until he was sitting quietly in the airport’s first-class lounge that Manny considered the severity of his predicament. He had to be more strategic. He could not have an enemy in his life right now, or do anything to make his situation worse. He needed to call and appease Cassandra.
“What do you want.” The sound of Cassandra’s voice made his legs tense up.
“I want apologize for my behavior last night. It was far from exemplary.”
“You were disgusting.”
“I was shocked. Please let me apologize.”
There weren’t many people in the lounge, and it was unlikely he would be recognized, but still San Francisco was a small city. Some sleepy, geeky guy fiddled with the coffee maker at the complementary buffet, his cheese Danish about to slide off his plate onto the rug. But that man didn’t seem to be listening to him.
“I want to discuss this shared problem of ours in more detail, Cassandra—”
“Shared. Exactly.”
“But I can’t do that now. My head’s a mess, and I need to think about it clearly. Please, accept my apology and just give me a little time to calm down.”
God, he hating apologizing to his ex-lovers. Manny had called Sonia last night, begged her to take Lonny and Carmen for the weekend, and apologized to her as well. He had had to say sorry more often in the past few days then he had in years. It made him itch all over.
“Fine,” Cassandra said. “Call me in a few days.” Cassandra’s voice was softer and less enraged now, as they got off the phone. He could only hope that he had done enough. He couldn’t have any kind of public scene waiting for him when he returned from Washington.
Manny squirmed in his airport lounge chair. Could he really have another child? This weekend Sonia would take his kids, Carmen and Lonny, to St. Sebastian’s in Mill Valley, as was right and proper, even if he couldn’t go with them. His children would sit quietly in the pews, well behaved, lulled by the soporific liturgy, their hair clean and brushed, their skin warming in the red glow of the stained glass windows. Carmen would wear that floral dress with the matching azalea in her hair. Alonzo would wear his blue blazer and sharp, striped tie. Manny’s children were beautiful, and he loved them, but he had already raised them. He was happy to be done with all that. Only six months left until Carmen’s confirmation.
Many men in his position would push their girlfriends to get an abortion. They wouldn’t even think twice about doing it. They would rather murder a baby than show a little resilience. But Manny would never be that selfish. He simply couldn’t do it. So he was trapped. Cassandra had known what he believed, and she had fucking trapped him.
He stood and grabbed a Danish from the buffet. He wanted to crush it in his fingers and throw it against the wall, but instead he took a long and deep breath, exhaled slowly, and took a bite. He would have to calm down and clear his mind. He would have to release his anger long before he reached Washington.
The same tall and thin limo driver picked up Manny at Dulles airport, although he had abandoned his Moreno sign. The car with tinted windows drove into the city, proceeded through the White House gates and approached the covered entrance to the West Wing—just pulled right up. It was surreal. Manny had always wanted to see the White House and to meet a sitting President, and he had always assumed he would, but it seemed improbable that he was minutes away from doing both those things. Another suited aide opened the limo’s door and ushered Manny into the lobby. They passed by the Roosevelt Room, where Manny glimpsed a painting over the fireplace of Teddy in his Rough Rider uniform, mounted on a jumpy steed. The aide led him through a narrow hallway into a wider corridor and stopped before a nondescript door. “Right in here, Judge Arroyo.”
Manny stepped into the Oval Office. President Shaw was seated behind the massive and ornate Resolute Desk, chatting with Lorna MacKneer, who stood beside him. The President rose to greet him. “Hello, Judge!” The right side of Shaw’s face twisted into a sneering half-smile—that smile that had been broadcast on television countless times. “So good to finally meet you.” Mark Shaw’s hand was warm and dry, and his smile had a genuine friendliness. “I guess you already know Lorna.”
Lorna MacKneer greeted Manny with her big, twitchy grin. She stood behind the President, to his side, holding a large file of papers that were probably all about him.
“Let’s have a seat.”
The President led him to one of the pale, yellow-striped Martha Washington chairs positioned by the fireplace and took the other for himself. MacKneer sat on the cream-colored damask couch on the President’s side. The Oval Office was oddly clean and sparse. It didn’t look as if any real work was done here. The President’s desk was empty of papers, and a large bouquet of freshly cut yellow roses decorated the coffee table, which matched the soothing palate of the large oval carpet. Photographs and paintings had been set on shelves, side tables and walls with artful precision, as Sonia would have done it, but the designer here knew exactly which colors in those
pictures would work well together, and which would clash, and what surfaces needed the light touch of a gleaming silver frame, or the dark heft of a wooden one.
Al-Tounsi Page 15
